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So much anti-mask rhetoric here. No mask < cloth mask < surgical mask < N95 etc < P99 etc None of these are 100%. Does not mean they’re 0% effective. When I

So much anti-mask rhetoric here. No mask < cloth mask < surgical mask < N95 etc < P99 etc None of these are 100%. Does not mean they’re 0% effective. When I cant get an entire Pizza but I can get 2 slices I don’t say ah fuck it, I’ll have none at all. Edit: if masks weren’t working at all, we’d see a lot of medical professionals catching covid. A lot lot more than we see now.

bjt2n3904 5y ago
The "anti-mask rhetoric" is not about the effectiveness of masks, but the necessity of mandating them. As for me, I've been living quite happily without one since about July last year.
- oauea 5y ago
  Must be nice being a healthy individual who doesn't care about spreading covid to less healthy people.
  - bjt2n3904 5y ago
    Terribly sorry about that. Perhaps if they have serious health concerns, they should take preventative measures such as being vaccinated, wearing masks, or isolating. But as far as the people I work with every day, who also do not wear masks, I have not spread COVID to any of them. Nor my family, nor my volunteer groups.
    - oauea 5y ago
      Masks exist to reduce spread. You're the one who has to wear them for it to be effective at reducing spread.
  - bmeski 5y ago
    This is the stupidest take.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    The difference is clear between states that require masks everywhere and states that don’t. Masks have no effect if they are mandated or not. My state has had every single new wave occur while already mandating masks.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
notabee 5y ago
A lot of people only want to think about it on their individual level, instead of realizing that every measure like masks, even lower quality masks, slows the spread on average and prevents the waves of infections from being as sharp or as massive, which really matters in terms of hospital capacity and general economic disruption caused by simultaneous sickenings. But it's probably preaching to the choir at this point about large segments of society being essentially selfish and myopic.
- bmeski 5y ago
  The “selfish and myopic” people I know in states that don’t have mask mandates have happy kids who go to school and can look at each other’s faces and grow as humans. Here in NYC we have woman yelling at kids to keep their masks on and they are in and out of school on a whim. Who is being selfish and myopic?
- cltby 5y ago
  It seems to me rather more selfish and myopic to shut down all of society over one's personal fear of the sniffles.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Calling covid "the sniffles" doesn't make you sound reasonable.
    - bmeski 5y ago
      That’s what it is for almost all children
      - pgalvin 5y ago
        Yes, but HN isn’t made up of children. The vast majority of people here are adults, a population in which Covid-19 is a risk for a large proportion. People aren’t talking about children and saying “you’re afraid of the sniffles* (* is only sniffles for children)” is disingenuous.
wand3r 5y ago
- zohch 5y ago
  - masterof0 5y ago
    I'll bite. Can you elaborate please? I honestly don't get the part of Karen being a racial slur.
    - ptudan 5y ago
      Karen pretty much means approaching-middle-age white woman, with negative connotations. I don't think the use itself is always racist but it can be.
    - zohch 5y ago
      If you are unclear on what the word means: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karen#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karen#Etymology_1 > (slang, originally African-American Vernacular, derogatory) A middle-aged white woman exhibiting a sense of entitlement or white privilege. And if you are unclear what a racial slur is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slur https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slur > An insult or slight, particularly one used to denigrate a specific group.
      - wand3r 5y ago
        IDK, I am not convinced. Apologies if I offended you but this linked article has ~5 citations. Only one in English is from March of 2019 which says: > “I’m not afraid of COVID-19 but what is scary, is the lack of common sense people have,” reads one of the most popular tweets about the coronavirus crisis. “I’m scared for people who actually need to go to the store & feed their fams but Susan and Karen stocked up for 30 years.” This doesn't prove the point IMO. This word has been in the common vernacular for likely less than 2 years. It is not race based in my interpretation and also has evolved to mean someone who is entitled generally. You can choose to not be entitled but you can't choose to be not black or not gay. I think this is reaching but apologies nonetheless.
bmeski 5y ago
- adrr 5y ago
  Flu kills at most 50,000 people a year. Covid is 10x that. All my life I don't know anyone who's died from the flu, i know multiple people who died from covid. It is like comparing measles to chickenpox. Measles has a very similar mortality rate as covid.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - brink 5y ago
    At the beginning of the pandemic it had a 10x death rate because it was new. Now that Covid is becoming endemic, people are building up immunity to covid and it's variants, and you should expect the death rate to fall substantially, which is what we are seeing now.
  - timr 5y ago
    > Measles has a very similar mortality rate as covid. Measles overwhelmingly kills children. SARS-CoV2 overwhelmingly kills the elderly and frail. This is why we have historically mandated measles vaccination for children. You can't simply use "mortality rate" over an entire population to claim the illnesses are similar, when it's trivial to see that they have different impacts.
  - xdennis 5y ago
    Covid is comparable to the flu young people. Up till now (~ 2 years), 56395 Americans less than 50yo have died from Covid and 768688 people over 50yo have died. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Covid is comparable to the flu young people No it's not. > Up till now (~ 2 years), 56395 Americans less than 50yo have died from Covid In the worst flu year in the last decade, the 95% confidence interval for total (all ages) flu deaths is 44k-64k and the flu also skews older for deaths, with around 75% in the over 50 category. 56k in 2 years under 50 is much worse than the flu in that age group.
fullstop 5y ago
If I were playing a video game and there was some armor which gave me even 10% protection, I'd put it on.
- gruez 5y ago
  If you were playing a video game you would also sprint all the time, rather than walk. Do you sprint all the time in real life? The difference is that in real life, sprinting has some non-negligible cost (eg. due to discomfort), whereas in a video game all you have to do is hold down a button. The same applies to masks/video game armor. Putting on a mask requires you to endure a non-negligible amount of discomfort for the entire time you wear it, whereas putting on an armor in a game causes you none.
  - fullstop 5y ago
    > The same applies to masks/video game armor. Putting on a mask requires you to endure a non-negligible amount of discomfort for the entire time you wear it, whereas putting on an armor in a game causes you none. This isn't really true, plenty of games make your character slower / heavier depending on what you have equipped. I'd also say that, for me, a mask is really not that uncomfortable and the discomfort is negligible.
    - rhino369 5y ago
      >for me, a mask is really not that uncomfortable and the discomfort is negligible. Great, so wear one. Nobody is asking you not to. I think its fairly uncomfortable and makes interactions harder. I won't.
- tromp 5y ago
  I would too. But then again then is zero discomfort wearing in-game armor, and you can change it in a second if it had downsides like making you hungry faster.
- aakresearch 5y ago
  Yeah, I, too, tend to drift towards Minimax/Maximin strategies when playing games. Basically, I know I'm there as soon as all the joy is sucked out of my play. That's why IRL it is not an option at all for me.
nostrebored 5y ago
I'd strongly encourage you to look into your mask hierarchy. Cloth and surgical masks are not particularly evidence based devices. Even N95s have a lot of pseudoscience supporting their use (minimal size of viruses). They probably do something -- but go around in a well fitting N95 mask and an active lifestyle and you'll see that it's simply infeasible. Your commentary about medical professionals is bizarre -- of course fewer medical professionals catch covid. They are exposed to it nearly constantly and generally have functional immune systems. If you work in a hospital, something you'll notice is you just stop getting sick very much. Everything is a game of tradeoffs. Cloth masks in particular are obviously not worth the tradeoffs. Surgical masks are likely not. Maybe N95 are in particular situations.
- aldebran 5y ago
  So your point is medical professionals don’t fall sick primarily due to their immune system? Don’t you think this has to do with their personal protection equipment and routine of washing hands etc?
- creato 5y ago
  Someone on HN just bought and tested a ton of masks, including surgical masks. Surgical mask material does filter nearly as well as N95 mask material, and the difference is fit. Based on data reported by this guy with actual equipment to test masks, most of your assumptions are highly questionable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Surgical masks are more fluid resistant than N95 masks, which is why they are used in hospital settings (the goal is to note contaminate the patients, not really about self protection that the N95 is better at). They are designed to solve different problems.
    - 5y ago
kristjansson 5y ago
Many, many people choose to reason only in binary terms.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Or to deny reason at all; maybe call it "unary" logic? ----- "Everybody has to die sometime." "If it's my time to go, it's my time to go." "I could get killed crossing the street." ----- Total denials of the possibility that anything has a cause.
timr 5y ago
> if masks weren’t working at all, we’d see a lot of medical professionals catching covid. A lot lot more than we see now. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. "I am carrying my anti-tiger rock. I have not encountered any tigers today. Therfore, my anti-tiger rock is working." You realize that medical professionals are almost universally vaccinated, have in large number had the virus already, and take other precautions, right?
- pgalvin 5y ago
  Whilst you have a good point for the present, it is noteworthy that medical professionals working in covid wards (and so the ones with FFP2/equivalent or better) had, in the studies I have read, consistently lower rates of infection than even other hospital workers (with only surgical masks) during the first wave. I recall seeing studies from the UK and US showing this, and possibly other countries.
sfblah 5y ago
There’s no question they do something. The question is whether in practical terms they’re worth mandating society-wide. It reminds me of the old 55mph speed limit. Sure, properly enforced it would lower oil usage and save lives. But it wasn’t properly enforced and in practice became a random tax on those who got pulled over. Not all interventions are effective when mandated society-wide.
creato 5y ago
I think a lot of anti-mask discussion is really just people love and absolutely cannot resist pointing out that someone else is "wrong" in their judgement. When that someone else is an expert, especially so. HN users are probably even more prone to this behavior (pointless pedantry seems more common in nerds). Literally yesterday we had someone with a $250k test rig test dozens of masks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 He also commented on how fit affects mask performance in great detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 In particular, he finds that a properly fitted N95 filters 99%+ of particles. A 75x boost in Covid protection seems reasonable in that case.
rhino369 5y ago
>None of these are 100%. Does not mean they’re 0% effective. Life is about cost-benefits. I'm not going to bother with a 11% effective mask if I'm vaccinated.

bjt2n3904 5y ago

The "anti-mask rhetoric" is not about the effectiveness of masks, but the necessity of mandating them. As for me, I've been living quite happily without one since about July last year.

oauea 5y ago
Must be nice being a healthy individual who doesn't care about spreading covid to less healthy people.
- bjt2n3904 5y ago
  Terribly sorry about that. Perhaps if they have serious health concerns, they should take preventative measures such as being vaccinated, wearing masks, or isolating. But as far as the people I work with every day, who also do not wear masks, I have not spread COVID to any of them. Nor my family, nor my volunteer groups.
  - oauea 5y ago
    Masks exist to reduce spread. You're the one who has to wear them for it to be effective at reducing spread.
- bmeski 5y ago
  This is the stupidest take.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  The difference is clear between states that require masks everywhere and states that don’t. Masks have no effect if they are mandated or not. My state has had every single new wave occur while already mandating masks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

notabee 5y ago

A lot of people only want to think about it on their individual level, instead of realizing that every measure like masks, even lower quality masks, slows the spread on average and prevents the waves of infections from being as sharp or as massive, which really matters in terms of hospital capacity and general economic disruption caused by simultaneous sickenings. But it's probably preaching to the choir at this point about large segments of society being essentially selfish and myopic.

bmeski 5y ago
The “selfish and myopic” people I know in states that don’t have mask mandates have happy kids who go to school and can look at each other’s faces and grow as humans. Here in NYC we have woman yelling at kids to keep their masks on and they are in and out of school on a whim. Who is being selfish and myopic?
cltby 5y ago
It seems to me rather more selfish and myopic to shut down all of society over one's personal fear of the sniffles.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Calling covid "the sniffles" doesn't make you sound reasonable.
  - bmeski 5y ago
    That’s what it is for almost all children
    - pgalvin 5y ago
      Yes, but HN isn’t made up of children. The vast majority of people here are adults, a population in which Covid-19 is a risk for a large proportion. People aren’t talking about children and saying “you’re afraid of the sniffles* (* is only sniffles for children)” is disingenuous.

wand3r 5y ago

zohch 5y ago
- masterof0 5y ago
  I'll bite. Can you elaborate please? I honestly don't get the part of Karen being a racial slur.
  - ptudan 5y ago
    Karen pretty much means approaching-middle-age white woman, with negative connotations. I don't think the use itself is always racist but it can be.
  - zohch 5y ago
    If you are unclear on what the word means: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karen#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Karen#Etymology_1 > (slang, originally African-American Vernacular, derogatory) A middle-aged white woman exhibiting a sense of entitlement or white privilege. And if you are unclear what a racial slur is: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slur https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slur > An insult or slight, particularly one used to denigrate a specific group.
    - wand3r 5y ago
      IDK, I am not convinced. Apologies if I offended you but this linked article has ~5 citations. Only one in English is from March of 2019 which says: > “I’m not afraid of COVID-19 but what is scary, is the lack of common sense people have,” reads one of the most popular tweets about the coronavirus crisis. “I’m scared for people who actually need to go to the store & feed their fams but Susan and Karen stocked up for 30 years.” This doesn't prove the point IMO. This word has been in the common vernacular for likely less than 2 years. It is not race based in my interpretation and also has evolved to mean someone who is entitled generally. You can choose to not be entitled but you can't choose to be not black or not gay. I think this is reaching but apologies nonetheless.

bmeski 5y ago

adrr 5y ago
Flu kills at most 50,000 people a year. Covid is 10x that. All my life I don't know anyone who's died from the flu, i know multiple people who died from covid. It is like comparing measles to chickenpox. Measles has a very similar mortality rate as covid.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- brink 5y ago
  At the beginning of the pandemic it had a 10x death rate because it was new. Now that Covid is becoming endemic, people are building up immunity to covid and it's variants, and you should expect the death rate to fall substantially, which is what we are seeing now.
- timr 5y ago
  > Measles has a very similar mortality rate as covid. Measles overwhelmingly kills children. SARS-CoV2 overwhelmingly kills the elderly and frail. This is why we have historically mandated measles vaccination for children. You can't simply use "mortality rate" over an entire population to claim the illnesses are similar, when it's trivial to see that they have different impacts.
- xdennis 5y ago
  Covid is comparable to the flu young people. Up till now (~ 2 years), 56395 Americans less than 50yo have died from Covid and 768688 people over 50yo have died. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Covid is comparable to the flu young people No it's not. > Up till now (~ 2 years), 56395 Americans less than 50yo have died from Covid In the worst flu year in the last decade, the 95% confidence interval for total (all ages) flu deaths is 44k-64k and the flu also skews older for deaths, with around 75% in the over 50 category. 56k in 2 years under 50 is much worse than the flu in that age group.

fullstop 5y ago

If I were playing a video game and there was some armor which gave me even 10% protection, I'd put it on.

gruez 5y ago
If you were playing a video game you would also sprint all the time, rather than walk. Do you sprint all the time in real life? The difference is that in real life, sprinting has some non-negligible cost (eg. due to discomfort), whereas in a video game all you have to do is hold down a button. The same applies to masks/video game armor. Putting on a mask requires you to endure a non-negligible amount of discomfort for the entire time you wear it, whereas putting on an armor in a game causes you none.
- fullstop 5y ago
  > The same applies to masks/video game armor. Putting on a mask requires you to endure a non-negligible amount of discomfort for the entire time you wear it, whereas putting on an armor in a game causes you none. This isn't really true, plenty of games make your character slower / heavier depending on what you have equipped. I'd also say that, for me, a mask is really not that uncomfortable and the discomfort is negligible.
  - rhino369 5y ago
    >for me, a mask is really not that uncomfortable and the discomfort is negligible. Great, so wear one. Nobody is asking you not to. I think its fairly uncomfortable and makes interactions harder. I won't.
tromp 5y ago
I would too. But then again then is zero discomfort wearing in-game armor, and you can change it in a second if it had downsides like making you hungry faster.
aakresearch 5y ago
Yeah, I, too, tend to drift towards Minimax/Maximin strategies when playing games. Basically, I know I'm there as soon as all the joy is sucked out of my play. That's why IRL it is not an option at all for me.

nostrebored 5y ago

I'd strongly encourage you to look into your mask hierarchy. Cloth and surgical masks are not particularly evidence based devices. Even N95s have a lot of pseudoscience supporting their use (minimal size of viruses). They probably do something -- but go around in a well fitting N95 mask and an active lifestyle and you'll see that it's simply infeasible. Your commentary about medical professionals is bizarre -- of course fewer medical professionals catch covid. They are exposed to it nearly constantly and generally have functional immune systems. If you work in a hospital, something you'll notice is you just stop getting sick very much. Everything is a game of tradeoffs. Cloth masks in particular are obviously not worth the tradeoffs. Surgical masks are likely not. Maybe N95 are in particular situations.

aldebran 5y ago
So your point is medical professionals don’t fall sick primarily due to their immune system? Don’t you think this has to do with their personal protection equipment and routine of washing hands etc?
creato 5y ago
Someone on HN just bought and tested a ton of masks, including surgical masks. Surgical mask material does filter nearly as well as N95 mask material, and the difference is fit. Based on data reported by this guy with actual equipment to test masks, most of your assumptions are highly questionable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Surgical masks are more fluid resistant than N95 masks, which is why they are used in hospital settings (the goal is to note contaminate the patients, not really about self protection that the N95 is better at). They are designed to solve different problems.
  - 5y ago

kristjansson 5y ago

Many, many people choose to reason only in binary terms.

pessimizer 5y ago
Or to deny reason at all; maybe call it "unary" logic? ----- "Everybody has to die sometime." "If it's my time to go, it's my time to go." "I could get killed crossing the street." ----- Total denials of the possibility that anything has a cause.

timr 5y ago

> if masks weren’t working at all, we’d see a lot of medical professionals catching covid. A lot lot more than we see now. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. "I am carrying my anti-tiger rock. I have not encountered any tigers today. Therfore, my anti-tiger rock is working." You realize that medical professionals are almost universally vaccinated, have in large number had the virus already, and take other precautions, right?

pgalvin 5y ago
Whilst you have a good point for the present, it is noteworthy that medical professionals working in covid wards (and so the ones with FFP2/equivalent or better) had, in the studies I have read, consistently lower rates of infection than even other hospital workers (with only surgical masks) during the first wave. I recall seeing studies from the UK and US showing this, and possibly other countries.

sfblah 5y ago

There’s no question they do something. The question is whether in practical terms they’re worth mandating society-wide. It reminds me of the old 55mph speed limit. Sure, properly enforced it would lower oil usage and save lives. But it wasn’t properly enforced and in practice became a random tax on those who got pulled over. Not all interventions are effective when mandated society-wide.

creato 5y ago

I think a lot of anti-mask discussion is really just people love and absolutely cannot resist pointing out that someone else is "wrong" in their judgement. When that someone else is an expert, especially so. HN users are probably even more prone to this behavior (pointless pedantry seems more common in nerds). Literally yesterday we had someone with a $250k test rig test dozens of masks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878971 He also commented on how fit affects mask performance in great detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888381, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892032 In particular, he finds that a properly fitted N95 filters 99%+ of particles. A 75x boost in Covid protection seems reasonable in that case.

rhino369 5y ago

>None of these are 100%. Does not mean they’re 0% effective. Life is about cost-benefits. I'm not going to bother with a 11% effective mask if I'm vaccinated.